Jim graduated from West High School in Salt Lake City in 1927, the year that he was editor of the school newspaper. He went on to the University of Utah for a year and two quaarters majoring in English and Drama, but the urge to marry overtook him, and on June 24, 1929 he eloped to Evanston, Wyoming with Katrina Quivey.

The marriage was so secret that not even their parents knew of it for 4 months. It seems that they felt that two incomes were better than one and Katrina's job, a school teacher, stipulated that only single women could work. Their parents became suspicious and once exposed, they had to join each other properly as man and wife. (Katrina subsequently lost her job).

Shortly after their marriage, Jim's firm, Bennett's Paint, transferred him to Pocatello, Idaho to become manager of their Idaho store. It was during this time when the Depression hit and instead of laying off employees, Bennett's cut the salaries of its workers. While in Pocatello, Jim and his wife made a series of moves that led them to finally paying $12 a month for their apartment. After 7 years and the birth of their daughter, Elaine, Bennett's installed him as head of the wallpaper department in Salt Lake City, Utah in March of 1936.

By June of 1946 the marriage, which had turned sour many years earlier, ended in divorce. In a letter Jim wrote to his father-in-law, L. Arthur Quivey, he used the excuse that neither could agree on their tastes: he liked to hike and play tennis while she didn't (she had weak knee caps that went out often); he loved to read poetry aloud while she preferred prose. He stated that they both had a vile temper which resulted in some rather nasty arguments. However, a more dominant cause was the fact that he couldn't stop seeing other women.

Eight months after the divorce he married Vivian Estella Ollerton Barker, a mother of five, in Las Vegas, Nevada and in 1948 he was transferred by Bennett's to the Los Angeles area to run their newly acquired warehouse. In 1963 he was transferred to Las Vegas and the following year to Salt Lake City. His last transfer was back to Las Vegas in 1966 to become a division manager and it was there that he retired in Feb. 1971 and moved to Carpinteria, California.

One of Jim's great loves was acting and he has been involved in some fifty community plays. He was awarded best leading actor for 1946-47 from the Salt Lake Theatre and best supporting actor 1961-62 from the Chapel Theatre of Redondo Beach, Calif. He even appeared, although briefly, on daytime network television on a serial entitled "Day in Court" over the Columbia Broadcasting System wherein he portrayed a testifying sheriff.

Received from Michael Wilson of Salt Lake City, Utah on 12 March 1997